What can tell you fingernails and toenails

In medical practice, it can safely be said that there are two types of patients. Those who are waiting for the appearance of symptoms, and those who are constantly looking for anxiety! The latter are easy to recognize, especially if you live with them. "Dedicated to the cause," they work without rest. Here they are, each morning standing in front of the mirror, carefully assessing their tongue sticking out. When they finish with this maneuver, they pass to the eyes. Have not those bloodshed and blurred? The women then jump under the shower to examine their mammary glands. Men check their testicles.

Well, self-testing of breasts and testicles is very important, everyone should do it regularly. But forget about language and eyes - a lined tongue and bloodshot eyes will not tell you too much important. There is, however, another part of the body that these "self-examiners" often miss, but which can give a lot of information: fingernails and toenails. But first you have to take off the varnish and, of course, any artificial decorations that some people find so attractive.

There are about forty different diseases, the diagnosis of which can be made simply by looking at the nails - from obsessive nibbling to anemia , lung disease , heart weakness , infection and poor blood supply to the brain . You can distinguish them if you know how to look. Note the color of your nails, their shape, thickness, the presence of any marks on top and under them and how hard the nails are sitting on your fingers.

Here are a few specific directions.

Nail biting is difficult to hide, unless you wear gloves. Nail picking can be just a bad habit , but can also reflect chronic stress and anxiety . If they are bitten so that the fingers are bleeding, this is an indicator of uncontrolled desire.

Pale nails indicate anemia . It can not tell the color of your skin if you spent time in the sun, but you do not camouflage the white nails, unless you paint them. Whatever the reason, if anemia is old and pronounced enough, your nails will become not only pale, but also fragile. They will also change their shape, making them either flat or curved, like a spoon, with longitudinal furrows. If you notice any of these signs (pallor always appears first), look at your palms and on the color of the conjunctiva of the eyes. If all this is just as pale, bet that you have anemia. The cause should be determined by the doctor. It can be the result of anything - from blood loss , which went unnoticed (latent bleeding hemorrhoids or stomach irritation from too large doses of aspirin), to bone marrow disease (which does not form healthy blood in sufficient quantities), a hidden tumor or chronically strong menstruation . However, usually this is due to a diet - with iron, which you do not get.

Bluish nails (cyanosis) mean that there is little oxygen in the blood . If you also have shortness of breath and cough, immediately consult a doctor. You probably have a certain degree of heart failure or chronic lung disease . On the other hand, if the nails are blue, but you do not have a cough or lack of breath, you may have been dealing with a harmful chemical substance that has poisoned your red blood cells. In children, cyanosis can be the result of congenital heart disease ("blue children"), which is corrected surgically.

Thick, deformed finger nails can arise from a number of diseases, for example fungal infection . If the doctor suspects this, he will scrape his nails a bit and look under the microscope. Psoriasis , in which skin areas throughout the body are covered with silver or white scales, can also warp the nails. If the problem is not associated with fungi or lichen, it can be caused by a lack of vitamins , arteriosclerosis or a host of other diseases. Seem the dermatologist.

"Mace-shaped" finger nails . If they are very round, like the back of a teaspoon, they can be called "clavate." This happens with various diseases - chronic infections , especially abscesses , lung cancer , chronic lung or heart disease , chronic tuberculosis and some forms of congenital heart disease . Why all these various diseases cause nails to deform so much remains a mystery. But perhaps this is due either to a change in the oxygen content of the blood, or to the manner in which blood flows to the fingers. If the underlying cause is successfully cured, these nail changes may disappear.

But before you panic about the shape of the nails, remember that there is a difference between a healthy rounded nail and a clavate. The question is to the degree. You can determine it by looking at the nail from the side. A healthy nail should form an angle of about 160 ° in a place where it meets the skin. A claw-shaped nail does not do this, it enters the skin in a straight line.

Each of you probably saw some little white speckles under your fingernails. They are pockets of air and usually do not play a role, they often disappear themselves, although they may persist for years. Enthusiasts of vitamins insist that they are caused by a vitamin deficiency, but this causes great doubts.

If you are a mysterious lover, you probably know what the combination of white lines and horizontal grooves means on the fingernails of the fingers. This is for sure a sign that someone is trying to get over you, pouring arsenic into your food. But remember, these furrows go from one side to the other, not along, as with anemia.

The combination of dry skin and brittle nails, which are easily separated from the nail bed, indicates a decreased function of the thyroid gland . In this case, you will also feel increased fatigue; The skin can have a lemon tinge, and the pulse may be rare; You are always cold and your coarse hair is slowly falling out. It is interesting that the increased function of this gland also makes the nails brittle and weak, but they are characteristically arched, like a spoon.

If, when you look closely at your fingernails, you notice something like a splinter , but you know that it is not she, because it does not hurt, you may have stumbled upon a very important evidence of subacute bacterial endocarditis . This disease, in which already affected heart valves (due to a congenital defect or rheumatic fever) become infected. Infection manifests its presence in temperature, weakness, fatigue and very often something like a little splinters under the fingernails of fingers. In fact, this is a small hemorrhage, and their presence with virtually 100% probability points to endocarditis. How did you get the infection? If you have a heart murmur and you allowed the dentist to treat the mouth without taking prophylactic antibiotics, the normal bacteria from your mouth went into the bloodstream and settled on the valvular valves.

There is an entirely different reason for splinter-like hemorrhages like fingernails: trichinosis , an infection you can get by eating raw or poorly processed pork. Other symptoms of trichinosis are various muscular pains and swollen eyes.

Look at your nails. Do you see the little white "half of the moon" at their base? This, of course, is normal. If your pituitary gland , the main glandular brain master, becomes ill, these "moons" disappear. However, if your nails have a whitish shade at the base , you may have a liver disorder , especially chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis (usually the result of a large amount of alcohol for many years).

So, like the skin, nails are a perfect reflection of your health. Many lives have been saved and many medical careers are made with brilliant diagnoses based on a quick glance at the nails of the patients.

Symptom: damage to the nails of the fingers and toes